Chapter 23: Come In

He stepped across the threshold, and I shut the door behind him.

The latch clicked.

It was the best sound I had ever heard.

"I owe you the whole night," Reuben said. "The car. The one I left out."

"Now?"

"Now, before anything else. Then I'll shut up."

I took his hand and led him through the boxes into the bedroom.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He stood in front of me, tall and awkward, with his glasses in his hand.

"It was three in the morning," he said. "A grey cat on my table, and you with your coat on, holding her down."

"I remember."

"I came out for a coffee and saw a woman in a silver car.

Her window was down, and she was looking through the glass at you."

His voice was low and level.

"She wasn't looking at the cat. She was looking at you, and she was making up her mind."

"And you wrote it down."

"I wrote it down. Then I walked back in, and you laughed at something Dean said."

He looked at me.

"I thought: she's happy. Let her be."

He looked at the floor.

"I told myself it was none of my business. Every day for three years I told myself that."

His jaw tightened.

"And every day I watched you wait for a text."

"Reuben."

"I'm not asking you to forgive it again. I know what it cost you."

He held my eyes.

"I will never keep a thing like that from you again."

I stood up.

I put my palm flat on his chest, over his heart, which was going hard.

"I forgave it in the owner's office," I said, "when you stood there and called it yours. I'm just now letting you say it."

His shoulders dropped.

"Come here," I said.

He kissed me slowly, his beard rough on my chin, his mouth hot.

I didn't.

I pulled his shirt up over his head and dropped it on a box.

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